Horse Blog Do’s & Don’ts Part 2

Here’s the next 10 blogging tips for a reader friendly blog!

Yesterday’s Part 1 was a huge hit! As promised, today we’re doing tips #11 through 20.

Before we get in to it – remember to have fun with your blog! There’s really no true rules. As always, I’d love to hear what you have to say at the end! Share your own tips and pet peeves!

11. Consider the content in any picture before posting.

Readers will have a hard time seeing a quick image as something fleeting or temporary, or as something unusual.

If you choose to post pictures of your horse, let’s say lathered and with a rope halter rubbing off its outside eye on the lunge line, then yes, viewers will see this as a true representation of how your horses are normally handled.

Even if it was just one time. For 5 minutes.

Just that it was published on your blog draws a parallel, and sets a precedence.

Getting off track here… As you can tell below, I check every picture before posting to make sure everything is correct and in place…

12. Ignore the statistics for now.

Hits of 2000 per month is insignificant, and won’t pull in any money. Just write anyway, have fun with it, and think of the reasons the blog started in the first place!

A way to document? An adventure? A chance to create a network of like-minded that could never happen in real life… Because we’re always too busy waiting for the farrier. Or run out of time cleaning tack, or fixing the broken hay net, again.

13. Spell check.

‘Nuff said. No grammar police, but a spell check is nice. I butcher sentences in my own special way and reverse the words to where the syntax is broken. More or less on purpose perhaps.

But a spell check is easy, and readers really do like it.

The easy part is pushing the square with ABC and a check mark, every time. Yes?

14. Imaging is king. (That’s not even a sentence, I’m lost.)

See 11 above – pictures mean a lot. Include a photo in every post.

We know content is king, but the eye is a cheat and an easy sell and will stay longer on a page with a picture.

Posts with no images get very little views. It’s simply how it works. You can read all sorts of marketing studies on this. Or just go with it – and break up those chunks of text.

Honorable mention:

Aim to use only your own images for at least 90% of all pictures on the blog. It makes a difference – the material should always feel as if it comes from you.

15. Page Backgrounds. Just. Don’t. Do it.

It should be illegal for themes with purple and pink paisley to even exist as an option.

No one does this any more. Right?!

16. Once-weekly posting may be enough.

Supposedly webcrawlers look for fresh content and it will help in search ratings if the website has been updated. If your site has new content, it will pop up higher/earlier in search engines. That’s all.

Excessive posting doesn’t really do anything. This blog is published more often, just because I like it… More posts doesn’t always equal more reader-worthy posts.

17. Answer comments on the blog. At some point.

I’m always incredibly grateful for reader comments. It’s fun, I love to interact, hear what others are doing and find out what they think about the post!

But there’s not law that says a writer has to be a slave to commenting right away. Many of us have an incredible long list of things that has to happen every day. (We’re horse people!) Taking time to write is huge.

Every one will understand if comments are unanswered for a couple of days. The less stress around anything with your writing, the more fun!

18. Quit it with the pop ups.

Unless it’s a cheesy self-help site. Or a scam. Or a virus. It feels a bit like click-bait…

Most of us are snake-fast with the “Back” button!

19. Focus on “Ease Of Use” for your readers.

The blog should be easy to read, access, and navigate! There are blogs where readers have to “click for more” to be able to read the entire post. Really? Come on! Many won’t click…

Don’t sacrifice ease of use just to get more page clicks and increased statistics on a page that doesn’t bring in any money in the first place. More “views” don’t make a difference in the larger scheme of things.

Readers will stay longer instead if the full post can be read upfront, and why not allow several, earlier, posts below it?

Maybe infinite scrolling of 5-10 posts? Sure, statistics will show more views if readers are forced to “click-through” to see each individual post.

But why??! I’d love to hear your feedback on this. Hit me!

20. Reviews, and how they may, or may not generate more followers.

Write reviews because they’re fun and because you enjoy writing them. My posts with the largest statistics and the longest shelf life are all reviews. (Aside from a post with a tag Mount A Horse which keeps getting high hits, Germany every time. So wrong.)

The same goes for some shared posts and certain content found through Online Searches – they generate hits, but not necessarily new Followers.

Many come for the content, read, and move on. A view from Pinterest means just that – a view.

Just what everyone does when getting information, right? We don’t always take time to click-through past the article to find out who wrote it, what else is going on this site, and decide to Follow, Share, Like, Pin, or Forward it.

This doesn’t really change anything in the actual writing of the blog. Just more something to keep in mind – a blog can sit with lower followers and still have a huge reach.

Enjoyed the tips? Chime in!

Help your friends out and share your thoughts. Of course I’m all ears for your ideas to help make this blog easier to read.

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Published by aHorseForElinor

Rider dedicated to doing my best with dressage. Or saddle up successfully each time. Or how about just stay on.
This is "Dressage On A Dime" - Come read about it all at: https://ahorseforelinor.com/
View all posts by aHorseForElinor

PublishedJanuary 24, 2017January 18, 2017

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29 thoughts on “Horse Blog Do’s & Don’ts Part 2”

Another very good post with useful tips. I have re-blogged some horsey posts because they bring a different perspective ; different riding discipline, different horse type, young horse etc. Also I’ve re-blogged two posts about school horses because I think they deserve some of the limelight! On another note I get vexed with blogs where the posts all follow on but you have to go back to the title and click to get the post re-displayed to find the ‘liked’ or “comment” . It’s a minor thing but …… Anyway thanks for these two good posts!

On that last note – I believe it’s a “Theme” thing. Some themes will show likes at the bottom (despite the next, older, post following below) and some you won’t.
I know what you mean and I’ve seen it elsewhere!

My current theme lists likes at the bottom, but comments for the post are listed numerically at the top by the title. Not a big fan of this, but oh well, works for now.

Oh, spell check. Such a good friend! I will admit that when I am rushed and forget to use it, I immediately regret it and think “Nadia they are all going to read this and think you’re an IDIOT!” I also try to proof read the blogs for errors that won’t be caught by spell check. Try being the word to focus on…
I will admit I bookmarked your blog about the mattes pad. And plan on buying one. But I don’t ever do reviews myself as I don’t have great stuff to review. And to be honest, as much as I liked that particular blog of yours, I really enjoy the day to day ones of the blogs I read, best.
Thanks for Part 2!

I’m so glad you liked it!
And we all make spelling errors sometimes! Usually no big deal. It just gets me when I see there’s been no effort. For reviews, I usually really only read them if I’m remotely interested in the product. Otherwise I skip. They’ve come in very handy on many other sites! Much better than some Amazon “review”…

I don’t use spell-check because I don’t trust it (homonyms and all that…). Nevertheless, I do have a tough time trying to spell-check before the post is published. For some reason I just don’t see errors as well in the minimalized typeface used to compose the blog. Errors do immediately pop out if I preview the post, then all I have to do is remember which ones they were when I go back into the compose mode to fix it…sigh…

With you on this Alli. My spell check is my handy dictionary, very old fashioned. It is in preview mode where I find my spelling and grammatical errors, and find where to fix the tortured language of a badly-worded sentence. 🙂

I spell check, and then ignore most of it. Since I make up so much stuff on my own 😉
Yes to the review! I push review, a new window comes up, errors pop out just like you say, and in the first window (which stays open in editing mode) I do the changes straight away. No memoizing. This is THE way to go.
Try it!

When it comes to blogging, there are no hard and fast rules – what is right or not. But, of course, I’m not an exclusive horse blog though more horse content has appeared over the past three years. Unfortunately, Twitter, FB and Instagram has undermined the long-form post along with viewers not wanting to invest the time to read.

I also think long-form was a novelty that sort of wore off as time went by…
I still read very long posts just because they’re excellent – usually I find them at WP under “discover”.
A little interesting, ever changing, feature of new posts with extremely diverse topics.

I agree with you on the bit about finding your own voice and being true to it. I also think it is important to keep the posts short and with a single focus. Pictures, yes. And, I’ve been known to delete comments but fortunately not too many. Mostly spam. I agree, also, on the color background. Mine is plain black — because I think it sets off photos nicely. But, if I had it to do over again, I’d stick with plain. I’m too lazy to go in and change it now though. You know, no time.

Another great bunch of info!
Pop-ups… I am saddened when I want to comment on someone’s post and they have a pop-up, demanding my email address first. I am quick with the back button also. 😦

I do my best to avoid spelling errors.
Like you, I make up my own words and they get ‘added to dictionary’.

Your son takes awesome pictures! I have been enjoying them immensely! Please tell him I feel he is very gifted.
My son also takes pictures, which I sometimes use.
I now give credit below each pic, as to who took it.
A reader suggested I do that.

As for your post here?
I personally would have broken the 2 Posts into 4 posts with 5 tips each.
I try to keep my posts from 300 – 500 words.

Glad to have company in the “word invention” hobby! 🙂
An yep, you and I can’t be the only ones disliking pop ups…
I love seeing credits on photos on blogs! For my own, it’s usually just me, son, or hubby, so I’ve ignored that part entirely.

I’m definitely with you on creating short posts. See, I KNEW this would be good stuff for blogs outside the Horse Theme 🙂
For this post, it simply felt like overkill to split it up even further. Sort of a “week” theme then, since I had a post the day prior where I had another 10 tips. Well, but then again, maybe that would have been a sort of fun week. Keeping it short trumps everything! 🙂
Fun to have you here!

Well Hi, and Welcome! Happy to have you here. You know, the best thing with writing is that there really isn’t any rules for how you should set your site up. Just make it welcoming, keep it simple, and start writing – it will all work itself out.
I hope you come back here!
And also, fingers crossed for your own horse one day 🙂

I know ALL about that – I rode “other peoples horses” for many years. It’s the best really, you learn much more that way for sure! Then I finally gave in 3 years ago and bought my own. Big troubles ever since haha! 😉